Two glorious nymphs of your own godlike line,
Whose morning rays like noontide strike and shine,
Whom you to suppliant monarchs shall dispose,
To bind your friends and to disarm your foes.

III.

Epilogue to THE MAN OF MODE: or, Sir Fopling
Flutter. By Sir GEORGE ETHEREGE, 1676.
Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown,
They seem not of heaven's making but their own.
Those nauseous Harlequins in farce may pass,
But there goes more to a substantial ass:
Something of man must be exposed to view,
That, Gallants! they may more resemble you.
Sir Fopling is a fool so nicely writ,
The ladies would mistake him for a wit;

[cry,

And when he sings, talks loud, and cocks, would
I vow methinks he's pretty company;
So brisk, so gay, so travell'd, so refined,
As he took pains to graff upon his kind.
True fops help Nature's work, and go to school
To file and finish God Almighty's fool.
Yet none Sir Fopling him, or him can call;
He's knight o' th' shire, and represents ye all.
From each he meets he culls whate'er he can ;
Legion's his name, a people in a man.
His bulky folly gathers as it goes,

And rolling o'er you, like a snowball, grows.
His various modes from various fathers follow,
One taught the toss, and one the new French wal-
low.

His sword-knot this, his cravat that design'd,
And this, the yard-long snake, he twirls behind.
From one the sacred periwig he gain'd,
Which wind ne'er blew, nor touch of hat profaned
Another's diving bow he did adore,

Which with a shog casts all the hair before,
Till he with full decorum brings it back,
And rises with a water-spaniel shake.

As for his songs, the ladies' dear delight,
These sure he took from most of you who write.
Yet every man is safe from what he fear'd,
For no one fool is hunted from the herd.

IV.

Epilogue to MITHRIDATES KING OF PONTUS.
Mr. N. LEE. 1678.

You've seen a pair of faithful lovers die;
And much you care; for most of you will cry
"Twas a just judgment on their constancy.
For, Heaven be thank'd, we live in such an age
When no man dies for love but on the stage:
And e'en those martyrs are but rare in plays;
A cursed sign how much true faith decays.
Love is no more a violent desire;
'Tis a mere metaphor, a painted fire.
In all our sex, the name examined well,
Tis pride to gain, and vanity to tell.
In woman 'tis of subtle interest made:
Curse on the punk that made it first a trade!
She first did Wit's prerogative remove,
And made a fool presume to prate of love.
Let honour and preferment go for gold,
But glorious beauty is not to be sold;

Or if it be, 'tis at a rate so high,
That nothing but adoring it should buy.
Yet the rich cullies may their boasting spare;
They purchase but sophisticated ware.
'Tis prodigality that buys deceit,
Where both the giver and the taker cheat.
Men but refine on the old half-crown way,
And women fight like Swissers for their pay.

V.

Epilogue to a Tragedy called TAMERLANE.
Mr. SAUNDERS.

LADIES, the beardless author of this day
Commends to you the fortune of his play:
A woman-wit has often graced the stage,
But he's the first boy-poet of our age.
Early as is the year his fancies blow,
Like young Narcissus peeping through the snow.
Thus Cowley blossom'd soon, yet flourish'd long;
This is as forward, and may prove as strong.
Youth with the fair should always favour find,
Or we are damn'd dissemblers of our kind.
What's all this love they put into our parts?
Tis but the pit a pat of two young hearts.

By

By

Should Hag and Graybeard make such tender

moan,

Faith you'd e'en trust them to themselves alone,
And cry, Let's go, here's nothing to be done.
Since love's our business, as 'tis your delight,
The young, who best can practice, best can write.
What though he be not come to his full power?
He's mending and improving every hour.
You sly she-jockies of the box and pit
Are pleased to find a hot unbroken wit:
By management he may in time be made,
But there's no hopes of an old batter'd jade;
Faint and unnerved he runs into a sweat,
And always fails you at the second heat.

VI.

An Epilogue for the King's house.
We act by fits and starts, like drowning men,
But just peep up, and then pop down again.
Let those who call us wicked change their sense;
For never men lived more on Providence.
Not lottery cavaliers are half so poor,
Nor broken Cits, nor a vacation whore.
Not courts, nor courtiers living on the rents
Of the three last ungiving Parliaments:
So wretched, that if Pharaoh could divine,
He might have spared his dream of seven lean
kine,

And changed his vision for the Muses Nine.
The comet that, they say, portends a dearth,
Was but a vapour drawn from playhouse earth,
Pent there since our last fire, and, Lilly says,
Foreshows our change of state, and thin-third days.
'Tis not our want of wit that keeps us poor,
For then the printers' press would suffer more.
Their pamphleteers each day their venom spit;
They thrive by treason, and we starve by wit.
Confess the truth, which of you has not laid
Four farthings out to buy the Hatfield Maid?
Or, which is duller yet, and more would spite us,
Democritus his Wars with Heraclitus?
Such are the authors who have run us down,
And exercised you critics of the Town.
Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes;
Y'abuse yourselves more dully than the times.
Scandal, the glory of the English nation,

Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion.
Such harmless thrusts as if, like fencer wise,
They had agreed their play before their prize.
Faith they may hang their harps upon the willows;
'Tis just like children when they box with pillows.
Then put an end to Civil wars for shame;

Let each night-errant who has wrong'd a dame
Throw down his pen, and give her, as he can,
The satisfaction of a gentleman.

VII.

Epilogue to THE LOYAL BROTHER: or, THE PER-
SIAN PRINCE, 1682.

A VIRGIN poet was served up to-day,
Who till this hour ne'er cackled for a play.

He's neither yet a Whig nor Tory boy,

But, like a girl, whom several would enjoy,

Begs leave to make the best of his own natural toy Were I to play my callow author's game,

The King's House would instruct me by the

name.

There's loyalty to one: I wish no more;

A commonwealth sounds like a common whore.

Let husband or gallant be what they will,

One part of woman is true Tory still.

If any factious spirit should rebel,

Our sex with ease can every rising quell.

Then, as you hope we should your failings hide,
An honest jury for our play provide.
Whigs at their poets never take offence;

They save dull culprits who have murder'd sense:
Though nonsense is a nauseous heavy mass,
The vehicle call'd Faction makes it pass.

Faction in play's the Commonwealth-man's bribe,
The leaden farthing of the Canting tribe,
Though void in payment laws and statutes make it,
The neighbourhood that knows the man will
take it.

'Tis Faction buys the votes of half the pit.
Theirs is the pension-parliament of wit.
In city-clubs their venom let them vent;
For there 'tis safe in its own element,

Here, where their madness can have no pretence,
Let them forget themselves an hour of sense.

In one poor isle why should two factions be?
Small difference in your vices I can see;
In drink and drabs both sides too well agree.
Would there were more preferments in the land!
If places fell the party could not stand.

Of this damn'd grievance every Whig complains; They grunt like hogs till they have got their grains.

Mean-time you see what trade our plots advance, We send each year good money into France; And they that know what merchandise we need Send o'er true Protestants to mend our breed.

VIII.

Epilogue to the University of Oxford. Spoken by MR. HART at the acting of the SILENT WOMAN. No poor Dutch peasant, wing'd with all his fear, Flies with more haste when the French armus draw

near

Than we with our poetic train come down,
For refuge hither, from th' infected Town.
Heaven for our sins this summer has thought fit
To visit us with all the plagues of wit.

A French troop first swept all things in its way,
But those hot Monsieurs were too quick to stay:
Yet, to our cost, in that short time we find
They left their itch of novelty behind.
Th' Italian Merry-Andrews took their place,
And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd grimace.
Instead of wit and humours, your delight
Was there to see two hobby-horses fight:
Stout Scaramoucha with rush lance rode in,
And ran a-tilt at Centaur Arlequin.
For love you heard how am'rous asses bray'd,
And cats in gutters gave their serenade.
Nature was out of countenance, and each day
Some new-born monster shown you for a play.
But when all fail'd, to strike the stage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines call'd Machines are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are play'd,
And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid:
Art-magic is for poetry profess'd;

And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast,
To which Egyptian dotards once did bow,
Upon our English stage are worshipp'd now.
Witchcraft reigns there, and raises to renown
Macbeth, and Simon Magus of the town;
Fletcher's despised, your Jonson's out of fashion,
And wit the only drug in all the nation.
In this low ebb our wares to you are shown;
By you those staple authors' worth is known;
For wit's a manufacture of your own.

When you, who only can, their scenes have praised,
We'll boldly back, and say their price is raised.

IX.

Epilogue. Spoken at Oxford. By MRS. MARSHALL.
OFT has our poet wish'd this happy seat
Might prove his fading Muse's last retreat.
I wonder'd at his wish, but now I find
He sought for quiet and content of mind,
Which noiseful towns and courts can never know,
And only in the shades like laurels grow.
Youth, ere it sees the world, here studies rest,
And Age returning thence concludes it best.
What wonder if we court that happiness
Yearly to share which hourly you possess,
Teaching e'en you, while the vex'd world we show
Your peace to value more and better know?
Tis all we can return for favours past,
Whose holy memory shall ever last;
For patronage from him whose care presides
O'er every noble art, and every science guides;
Bathurst! a name the learn'd with reverence know,
And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe;
Whose age enjoys but what his youth deserved,
To rule those Muses whom before he served.
His learning and untainted manners too,
We find, Athenians! are derived to you:
Such ancient hospitality there rests

In yours, as dwelt in the first Grecian breasts,
Whose kindness was religion to their guests.
Such modesty did to our sex appear

As, had there been no laws, we need not fear,
Since each of you was our protector here,
Converse so chaste, and so striet virtue shown,
As might Apollo with the muses own.
Till our return we must despair to find
Judges so just, so knowing, and so kind.

X.

Epilogue to CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. By Mr. N.
LER, 1684.

Our hero's happy in the play's conclusion⚫
The holy rogue at last has met confusion.
Though Arius all along appear'd a saint,
The last act show'd him a true Protestant,
Eusebius (for you know I read Greek authors)
Reports that, after all these plots and slaughters,
The court of Constantine was full of glory,
And every Trimmer turn'd addressing Tory.
They follow'd him in herds as they were mad;
When Clause was king then all the world was glad.
Whigs kept the places they possess'd before,
And most were in a way of getting more;
Which was as much as saying, Gentlemen,
Here's power and money to be rogues agen.
Indeed there were a sort of peaking tools,
Some call them modest, but I call them fools,
Men much more loyal, though not half so loud;
But these poor devils were cast behind the crowd:
For bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense,
But good men starve for want of impudence.
Besides all these there were a sort of wights,
(I think my author calls them Tekelites)
Such hearty rogues against the king and laws,
They favour'd e'en a foreign rebel's cause:
When their own damn'd design was quash'd and

awed,

At least they gave it their good word abroad:
As many a man who, for a quiet life,
Breeds out a bastard not to noise his wife.
Thus o'er their darling plot these Trimmers cry,
And though they cannot keep it in their eye,
They bind it 'prentice to Count Tekely.
They believe not the last plot; may I be curst
If I believe they e'er believed the first.
No wonder their own plot no plot they think;
The man that makes it never smells the stink.
And now it comes into my head, I'll tell
Why these damn'd Trimmers loved the Turks sc
well.

Th' original Trimmer, though a friend to no man,
Yet in his heart adored a pretty woman:
He knew that Mahomet laid up for ever
Kind black-eyed rogues for every true believer;
And, which was more than mortal man e'er tasted,
One pleasure that for threescore twelvemonths
lasted:

To turn for this may surely be forgiven;
Who'd not be circumcised for such a heaven?

XI.

Epilogue to the King and Queen, upon the union of the two companies, 1686.

NEW ministers, when first they get in place,
Must have a care to please; and that's our case.
Some laws for public welfare we design,

If you, the power supreme, will please to join.
There are a sort of prattlers in the pit,
Who either have or who pretend to wit.
These noisy Sirs so loud their parts rehearse,
That oft' the play is silenced by the farce.
Let such be dumb, this penalty to shun,
Each to be thought my lady's eldest son.
But stay; methinks some vizard mask I see
Cast out her lure from the mid gallery;
About her all the fluttering sparks are ranged,
The noise continues though the scene is changed:
Now growling, sputtering, wawling such a clutter,
'Tis just like puss defendant in a gutter.

Fine love, no doubt! but ere two years are o'er ye,
The surgeon will he told a woful story.
Let Vizard Mask her naked face expose,
On pain of being thought to want a nose.
Then for your lackeys, and your train beside,
By whate'er name or title dignified,
They roar so loud, you'd think behind the stairs
Tom Dove, and all the brotherhood of Bears.
They're grown a nuisance, beyond all disasters;
We've none so great but their unpaying masters.
We beg you, Sirs, to beg your men, that they
Would please to give you leave to hear the play.
Next in the playhouse spare your precious lives;
Think, like good Christians, on your bairns and

wives;

Think on your souls; but, by your lugging forth,
It seems you know how little they are worth.
If none of these will move the warlike mind,
Think on the helpless whore you leave behind.

We beg you last our scene-room to forbear,
And leave our goods and chattels to our care.
Alas! our women are but washy toys,
And wholly taken up in stage employs :
Poor willing tits they are; but yet I doubt
This double duty soon will wear them out.
Then you are watch'd besides with jealous care;
What if my Lady's page should find you there?
My Lady knows t'a tittle what there's in ye;
No passing your gilt shilling for a guinea.
Thus, Gentlemen, we have summ'd up in short
Our grievances from country, town, and court,
Which humbly we submit to your good pleasure;
But first vote money, then redress at leisure.

XII.

Epilogue to THE PRINCESS OF CLEVES, 1689. A QUALM of conscience brings me back again To make amends to you bespatter'd men. We women love like cats that hide their joys, By growling, squalling, and a hideous noise. I rail'd at wild young sparks; but without lying, Never was man worse thought on for high-flying. The prodigal of love gives each her part, And squandering shows at least a noble heart. I've heard of men who in some lewd lampoon Have hired a friend to make their valour known. That accusation straight this question brings, What is the man that does such naughty things? The spaniel lover, like a sneaking fop, Lies at our feet; he's scarce worth taking up. "Tis true such heroes in a play go far; But Chamber-practice is not like the bar. When men such vile, such faint petitions make, We fear to give, because they fear to take. Since modesty's the virtue of our kind, Pray let it be to our own sex confined: When men usurp it from the female nation, Tis but a work of supererogationWe show'd a Princess in the play, 'tis true, Who gave her Cæsar more than all his due; Told her own faults: but I should much abhor To choose a husband for my confessor. You see what fate follow'd the saint-like fool, For telling tales from out the nuptial-school." Our play a merry comedy had proved Had she confess'd so much to him she loved. True Presbyterian wives the means would try, But damn'd confessing is flat Popery.

Epilogue to HENRY II.

XIII.

By Mr. MOUNTFORT, 1693.
Spoken by Mrs. BRACEGIRDLE.

THUS you the sad catastrophe have seen,
Occasion'd by a mistress and a queen.
Queen Eleanor the Proud was French, they say,
But English manufacture got the day.
Jane Clifford was her name, as books aver;
Fair Rosamond was but her nom de guerre.
Now tell me, Gallants! would you lead your life
With such a mistress or with such a wife?
If one must be your choice, which d'ye approve,
The curtain lecture or the curtain love?
Would ye be godly with perpetual strife,
Still drudging on with homely Joan your wife,
Or take your pleasure in a wicked way,
Like honest whoring Harry in the play?

I guess your minds; the mistress would be taken,
And nauseous Matrimony sent a-packing.
The devil's in you all; mankind's a rogue;
You love the bride, but you detest the clog.
After a year poor spouse is left i' th' lurch.
And you like Haynes, return to mother-church.
Or, if the name of Church comes cross your mind,
Chapels of Ease behind our scenes you find.
The playhouse is a kind of market-place:
One chaffers for a voice, another for a face;
Nay, some of you, I dare not say how many,
Would buy of me a penn'worth for your penny.
E'en this poor face, which with my fan I hide,
Would make a shift my portion to provide,
With some small perquisites I have beside.
Though for your love perhaps I should not care,
I could not hate a man that bids me fair.
What might ensue 'tis hard for me to tell,
But I was drench'd to-day for loving well,
And fear the poison that would make me swell.

XIV.

An Epilogue.

You saw our wife was chaste, yet throughly try'd,
And, without doubt, y' are hugely edified;
For like our hero whom we show'd to-day,
You think no woman true but in a play.
Love once did make a pretty kind of show;
Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow;
But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.
Now some small chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation.
In comedy your little selves you meet;
'Tis Covent-Garden drawn in Bridges-Street.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
Who act those follies poets toil to write!
The sweating Muse does almost leave the chase;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Pro:ean vices
Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly [pace.
To some new frisk of contrariety.
You roll like snow-balls, gathering as you run,
And get seven devils when dispossessed of one.
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
Nothing of love beside the face was seen;
But every inch of her you now uncase,
And clap a vizard-mask upon the face.
For sins like these the zealous of the land,
With little hair and little or no band,
Declare how circulating pestilences
Watch every twenty years to snap offences.
Saturn e'en now takes doctoral degrees,
He'll do your work this summer without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phoebus! find thy grace,
And, ah! preserve the eighteen-penny place!
But for the pit-confounders, let them go,
And find as little mercy as they show:
The actors thus, and thus thy poets pray;
For every critic saved thou damn'st a play.

XV.

Epilogue to THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD. LIKE some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit, So trembles a young poet at a full pit.

Unused to crowds, the parson quakes for fear
And wonders how the devil he durst come there,
Wanting three talents needful for the place,
Some beard, some learning, and some little grace.
Nor is the puny Poet void of care,

For authors, such as our new authors are,
Have not much learning nor much wit to spare:
And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce

one

But has as little as the very Parson.

Both say they preach and write for your instruction,
But 'tis for a third day, and for induction.
The difference is, that though you like the play,
The Poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day.
But with the Parson 'tis another case;
He without holiness may rise to grace.
The Poet has one disadvantage more,
That if his play be dull he's damn'd all o'er,
Not only a damn'd blockhead but damn'd poor.
But dulness well becomes the sable garment;
I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's preferment:
Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes,
Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose,
For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux.
You laugh not, Gallants! as by proof appears,
At what his Beauship says, but what he wears;
So 'tis your eyes are tickled, not your ears.
The tailor and the furrier find the stuff,
The wit lies in the dress and monstrous mut
The truth on't is, the payment of the pit
Is like for like, clipt money for clipt wit.
You cannot from our absent author hope
He should equip the stage with such a fop:
Fools change in England, and new fools arise;
For though th' immortal species never dies.
Yet every year new maggots make new flies:
But where he lives abroad he scarce can find
One fool for millions that he left behind.

XVI.

Epilogue to THE PILGRIM. PERHAPS the Parson stretch'd a point too far, When with our theatres he waged a war. He tells you that this very moral age Received the first infection from the stage.

But sure a banish'd court, with lewdness fraught,
The seeds of open vice returning brought,
Thus lodged (as vice by great example thrives)
It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore
So plentiful a crop of horns before.

The poets, who must live by courts or starve,
Were proud so good a government to serve,
And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
Tainted the stage for some small snip of gain.
For they like harlots under bawds profest,
Took all th' ungodly pains, and got the least.
Thus did the thriving malady prevail,
The court its head, the poets but the tail.
The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true,
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses they were, but modestly conceal'd;
Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd,
Who standing, as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was adored with rites divine.
Ere this, if saints had any secret motion,
'Twas chamber-practice all and close devotion.
I pass the peccadillos of their time;
Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.
A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
Compared with one foul act of fornication.
Now they would silence us, and shut the door,
That let in all the bare-faced vice before.
As for reforming us, which some pretend,
That work in England is without an end:
Well may we change, but we shall never mend.
Yet if you can but bear the present stage,
We hope much better of the coming age.
What would you say if we should first begin
To stop the trade of love behind the scene,
Where actresses make bold with marry'd men?
For while abroad prodigal the dolt is,
Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is.
In short, we'll grow as moral as we can,
Save here and there a woman or a man:
But neither you nor we, with all our pains,
Can make clean work; there will be some remains
While you have still your Oates and we our
Haynes.

SONGS.

THE FAIR STRANGER.

HAPPY and free, securely blest, No beauty could disturb my rest; My am'rous heart was in despair To find a new victorious fair:

Till you, descending on our plains,
With foreign force renew my chains;
Where now you rule without control
The mighty sovereign of my soul.

Your smiles have more of conquering charms
Than all your native country arms;
Their troops we can expel with ease,
Who vanquish only when we please.

But in your eyes, oh! there's the spell,
Who can see them and not rebel?
You make us captives by your stay,
Yet kill us if you go away.

ON THE YOUNG STATESMEN.

WRITTEN IN 1680.

CLARENDON had law and sense;
Clifford was fierce and brave;

Bennet's grave looks was a pretence,
And Danby's matchless impudence
Help'd to support the knave.

But Sutherland, Godolphin, Lory,
These will appear such chits in story,
'Twill turn all politics to jests,
To be repeated like John Dory,
When fiddlers sing at feasts.

Protect us, mighty Providence! What would these madmen have?

A SONG

FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY,
1687.

FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began.
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,

And could not heave her head,

The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise, ye more than dead!

Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,
In order to their stations leap,

And Music's power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony,

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,

The diapason closing full in man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quel!!
When Jubal struck the corded shell,

His listening brethren stood around,

And, wondering, on their faces fell
To worship that celestial sound,

Less than a god they thought there could not dwell
Within the hollow of that shell

That spoke so sweetly and so well.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell!

The Trumpet's loud clangour

Excites us to arms,

With shrill notes of anger

And mortal alarms;

The double, double, double beat

Of the thundering Drum

Cries, Hark! the foes come;

Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.

The soft complaining Flute

In dying notes discovers

The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling Lute
Sharp Violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs and desperation,

Fury, frantic indignation.

Depth of pains, and height of passion,

For the fair disdainful dame.

But, oh! what art can teach,

What human voice can reach,
The sacred Organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race,
And trees uprooted left their place,
Sequacious of the Lyre;

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher,
When to her Organ vocal breath was given;
An angel heard, and straight appear'd,
Mistaking earth for heaven.

GRAND CHORUS.

As from the power of sacred lays The spheres began to move,

All the nymphs were in white, and the shepherds

in green;

The garland was given, and Phyllis was queen:
But Phyllis refused it, and, sighing, did say,
I'll not wear a garland while Pan is away.

While Pan and fair Syrinx are fled from our shore,
The Graces are banish'd, and Love is no more;
The soft God of Pleasure, that warm'd our desires,
Has broken his bow and extinguish'd his fires;
And vows that himself and his mother will mourn
Till Pan and fair Syrinx in triumph return.

Forbear your addresses and court us no more,
For we will perform what the Deity swore;
But if you dare think of deserving our charms,
Away with your sheephooks, and take to your

arms:

Then laurels and myrtles your brows shall adorn, When Pan and his son and fair Syrinx return.

A SONG.

FAIR, Sweet, and young, receive a prize
Reserved for your victorious eyes:
From crowds, whom at your feet you see,
O pity and distinguish me!

As I, from thousand beauties more
Distinguish you, and only you adore.

Your face for conquest was design'd;
Your every motion charms my mind;
Angels, when you your silence break,
Forget their hymns to hear you speak;
But when at once they hear and view,

Are loath to mount, and long to stay with you.

No graces can your form improve,
But all are lost unless you love;

While that sweet passion you disdain,
Your veil and beauty are in vain :

In pity then prevent my fate,

For after dying all reprieve's too late.

A SONG.

HIGH state and honours to others impart,

But give me your heart:

That treasure, that treasure alone,

I beg for my own.

So gentle a love, so fervent a fire,
My soul does inspire;

That treasure, that treasure alone,
I beg for my own.

Your love let me crave;

Give me in possessing

So matchless a blessing;

That empire is all I would have.
Love's my petition,

All my ambition;
If e'er you discover
So faithful a lover,
So real a flame,
I'll die, I'll die;
So give up my game.

RONDELAY.

CHLOE found Amyntas lying,
All in tears, upon the plain,
Sighing to himself, and crying,
Wretched I, to love in vain!
Kiss me, Dear! before my dying;
Kiss me once, and ease my pain!

Sighing to himself, and crying,
Wretched I, to love in vain!
Ever scorning, and denying
To reward your faithful swain:
Kiss me, Dear! before my dying;
Kiss me once, and ease my pain!

Ever scorning, and denying
To reward your faithful swain;
Chloe, laughing at his crying,
Told him that he loved in vain:
Kiss me, Dear! before my dying;
Kiss me once, and ease my pain!

H